Relevancy vs Personlisation: Going beyond "first-name terms of engagement".

The baristas at Starbucks want to know your name. Whether you’re Amy, or Aimee, Amee or Ami, at the end of the day, it’s often a misspelled name on a cup of coffee, that Starbucks hope will enhance your customer experience. But what’s the value? Albeit, you lose the comic relief of adopting a pseudonym whilst waiting for your order, but how does this add value to the consumers engagement with Starbucks? First-name personalised engagement is used across many brands and products, but does this level of personlisation appear valuable to the consumer’s own experience?

We conducted our own research with DataIQ and found 84% of consumers want the choice to be identified or to be anonymous. Indeed, the DMA’s Talking the Consumers Language: Retail 2016 reveals that only 7% of respondents list “use my name” in service as a reason to be loyal to a brand. It also shows that communications about “general news” is just as valued as “offers / deals on things I’ve bought before”. Consumers’ value relevancy and personal service over personalised communications but many marketing initiatives confuse the concept of personal and personalised. As marketers how do we get over this hump to go beyond the first name terms and provide consumers with a relevant engaging experience?

One brand striving to go beyond first-name engagement is Regent Street.

Shopping on Regent Street is a luxurious experience – flagship stores, exclusive product ranges, a curated upscale experience on an iconic mile stretch of London’s West End. However, the spectrum of shopper demographics that hit Regent Street every day mean that not one “personalised experiences” fits all.

The Regent Street app, powered by autoGraph, allows the brands, stores, restaurants and bars, to communicate to shoppers based on the relevancy of their interests. Regent Street allows consumers to vote up or down any content shown to them, building a chronicle of interests that is fedback to the consumer through app content including brand offers, events and new season collections. This allows Regent Street to build a strong, reciprocal, ongoing relationship with the consumer through relevant communications, that doesn’t include knowing their first name. In fact, the Regent Street app keeps an anonymous relationship with the consumer and they are only asked to have a deeper relationship (e.g. give their name, email or other personal data) after they have understood the value and benefit of the in-app experience.

The proof is in the active customer engagement – over 94% of people create a profile with half of these users active in the app at least twice a month.

Back to the coffee - wouldn’t it be great if Starbucks could instantly match my coffee to my mood? Now that would be relevant to my Monday morning experience…

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